Gazizza, my dilznoofuses!

Menu

Quote-a-palooza

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” – Thomas Jefferson

“[T]he most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%. These are trends that have been in place for some time. And if you are hoping they will pass, here’s the bad news: They may actually accelerate. The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years. Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point. The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food. A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That’s soaking up some of the corn supply… The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it’s the rosy memory of a bygone age.” – Brett Arends

“We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” – Davy Crockett

“[W]hen we talk about federalism here in Washington, we’re really talking about putting the States more and more in charge. And that means that if what we conservatives believe in, if the principles that we stand for, are to succeed and prevail, we will need more conservatives… in our State legislatures… I can’t help wondering about that old argument for federalism. It used to be said that if we gave the States more power they’d show that they had the maturity to handle as well as Congress handles its power. Talk about faint praise.” – Ronald Reagan

“Politicians love a ‘crisis.’ John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who are paying their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further. Why? Because ‘crisis’ justifies making big government bigger. It’s why we now have a global warming ‘crisis’ and in previous years we had ‘crises’ over avian flu, the Y2K threat to computers, imaginary cancer spikes caused by pesticides, killer bees flying up from Mexico, and uncontrolled population growth leading to a ‘Population Bomb’ that will bring ‘riots and mass starvation’ by the year 2000. This is not to say that lots of homebuyers aren’t having a hard time. But the rapid rise and fall in housing values in some parts of the country- and the rippling consequences at each stage- do not justify scrapping what we know about economic success and turning to government control. Prosperity and stability come from people being free to innovate and produce- and yes, fail… The best regulator of economic activity and source of knowledge is free competition. Of course, government inhibits that in many ways. If we want to avoid disruptions like the current one, let’s undertake a wholesale examination of government intervention in the economy. Freedom, not control, is the ticket to success.” – John Stossel

“Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama’s problem. America is Mr. Obama’s problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men’s Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over … the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter’s Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There’s gold in that history. John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa’s knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92. Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That’s why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?” – Peggy Noonan

“Take [William] Ayers. Obama makes it sound as if the relationship consists of having run into each other at the DMV. In fact, Obama’s political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers’ home. Obama’s own campaign says that they maintain ‘friendly’ relations. Obama’s defense is that he was 8 when Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades were planting bombs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and other buildings. True. But Obama was 40 when Ayers said publicly that he doesn’t regret setting bombs. Indeed, he said, ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.’ Would you maintain friendly relations with an unrepentant terrorist?… As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates. He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than two to one. Ran close to 10,000 television ads- spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state- and lost by 10 points. And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other ‘issues.’ It was because of those ‘distractions’ – i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs.” – Charles Krauthammer